The theme of this book is the schools—public schools and private schools, primary and grammar and high schools; and now I have to carry out my promise, to show you that this same Black Hand of Southern California controls our board of education, putting its own representatives thereon; that it controls our school funds, wasting them in graft; that it controls our teachers, browbeating them and underpaying them and denying them their rights as citizens; that it controls our children, drilling them, suppressing them, putting poison thoughts into their minds—so that they shall come out perfect little bigots, prepared to hate and if necessary to tar and feather and lynch those people who try to apply real Americanism to America, and to protect the rights of the poor as well as of the rich. In other words, what the Black Hand wants, and what it has made for itself, is schools which will turn out a generation of children who will stand for all the infamies I have just narrated, and will regard them as right and necessary and patriotic actions, and the men who perpetrate them as courageous public officials and high-minded patriots. CHAPTER V THE SCHOOLS OF THE “TIMES” Naturally, we have to begin with the “Times”; and at the very outset, to show you what the “Times” wants from our schools, I narrate the experience of Mr. M. C. Bettinger, until recently a member of the board of education, and for thirty-eight years connected with the educational system of Los Angeles. In the year 1906 Mr. Bettinger happened to be in the office of Superintendent Foshay, when that gentleman was packing up his belongings and preparing to retire from his job. He took out of his desk a bale of papers two inches thick, fastened with a rubber-band. “Thank God,” he said, “at least I don’t have to pay any more tribute to the ‘Times.’ These are receipts for money which I’ve had to pay to that paper upon one pretext or another for the past eleven years!” Or consider the experience of Dr. E. C. Moore, who succeeded Mr. Foshay as superintendent. In the year 1907 the National Education Association held its convention in Los Angeles, and in the guide-book prepared for it was an article by General Otis, publisher of the “Times,” denouncing union labor. Dr. Moore had the courage to cut out these passages, and for this General Otis set out to “get” him, and in due course did so.